Viva La Republic!?

 

 

 

Just been listening to a bit of a royalist love-in on 5Live as Charlie makes a good impression with the boat people of Somerset-Under-Water….and the BBC ‘Royal’ correspondent.

The BBC had no problem with his highly political comments…in fact they give them the headline on the website:

Somerset flood delay a ‘tragedy’, says Prince Charles

 

How times change when it suits…normally if Charlie interferes in the political process by writing letters expressing his opinions there are cries of outrage…not so here when he’s slating the Coalition….and promoting climate change….suddenly the ‘non-political’ Prince is a valued commentator to whom Government must respond…..

Asked to respond to the Prince’s comments, David Cameron’s official spokesman said: “The prime minister has repeatedly said… that the situation that a number of communities in the Somerset area find themselves in is unacceptable.

 

 

As said…not always so….  

Prince Charles is the voice of Mel Phillips, not the people

From Chelsea barracks to education, the Prince of Wales’s abuse of position cries out for constitutional action.

 

 

Way back in 2012 we learn from the BBC that the Prince’s comments must be kept secret or he would  “forfeit his position of political neutrality” and would as such “be seriously damaging to his role as a future monarch”.

Charles in charge?

The attorney general has blocked the publication of a raft of letters that Prince Charles wrote to seven government departments between 1 September 2004 and 1 April 2005. He said these letters revealed the Prince’s “most deeply held views”, they were “particularly frank” and “would potentially have undermined his position of political neutrality”.

The Guardian newspaper wanted them published – and a freedom of information tribunal agreed that they should be – because there was a public interest in doing so, on grounds of transparency, better understanding of relations between government and the monarchy, and those allegations of inappropriate lobbying by the Prince on health, architecture and other policy.

But the attorney overturned the tribunal’s ruling, saying publication of these letters would “forfeit his position of political neutrality” and would as such “be seriously damaging to his role as a future monarch”.

All this raises a rather interesting question: where do you draw the line?

 

 

No calls about his forfeiting his political neutrality and to stand down as Heir apparent?

 

 

 

 

Independent Advice?

 

 

Remember a couple of weeks ago when we heard this:

Ed Miliband wants consumer groups to improve uncompetitive markets

Labour leader says Competition and Markets Authority would seek independent advice on tackling suppliers and regulators
Miliband said on the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme that under Labour plans, bodies such as Citizens Advice and Which? would work with the Competition and Markets Authority to define a programme for the year ahead. The idea is to highlight areas that parliament and the business secretary should be focusing on.
Miliband will be taking advice on how to regulate Business from the likes of consumer group Which?….you may have had doubts about that to start with….how many more doubts when you read this:

What is Milibandism?

Your guide to the key intellectual texts, thinkers and activists

Independent thinktanks and charities

IPPR (Institute for Public Policy Research) Run by Nick Pearce (former policy unit head at No 10), it devises policy in terms of what might work in an era of no money.

Resolution Foundation Its director, Gavin Kelly (former deputy chief of staff to Gordon Brown), is the man with the PowerPoint slides that tell the whole squeezed-middle story.
Which? Consumer charity whose head, Richard Lloyd, a former No 10 adviser, has a backstage pass to the offices of Eds Miliband and Balls.
Nice to get confirmation of what we knew already about the Resolution Foundation, and interesting that they and the IPPR are classed as ‘independent’ by the Guardian……and  the BBC never revealed the link between Labour and the head of Which?  Which might be relevant to the story….not an independent group siding with Labour purely because it thinks his policies are consumer friendly…but maybe a suspicion that it is because the boss is a Labourite….just more State control of Business using supposedly independent advisors.
Red Ed gets redder.
Richard has also worked for two years in No10 Downing Street as an adviser to the Prime Minister, dealing with economic issues across the government, including strategy, communications and consumer policy.
And in 2013 when ‘Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party, delighted his supporters when he announced that Labour will freeze UK gas and electricity bills if they come to power in the next election.’…..
Which? Executive Director, Richard Lloyd, said: “We now look forward to seeing the detail of how this will work. “Wholesale costs are the biggest part of the eye-watering rises to energy bills that people have faced over the last 10 years. “Making the wholesale market competitive by separating energy generation from supply is essential to help keep prices in check.”
Guess Lloyd was one of those ‘delighted supporters’.

Cut the Big Six Energy Companies Down to Size, George

Posted 31 October 2013 | (00:00)

With almost eight in 10 people worried about rising energy costs and suppliers being hauled in front of MPs to justify their latest inflation-busting price hikes, Which? is calling on the Chancellor to stand up for consumers.

The Truth Behind Spiralling Energy Prices

Posted 14 October 2013 | (01:00)

We’ve all seen the rather undignified blame game around why our energy prices are rising.

Some people blame the cost of wholesale energy. Some people blame the government’s green subsidies and policies.

Some blame the ‘greedy profiteering energy fat cats’. Some have even blamed consumers for not helping…

Ed’s Price Promise a Bold Move

Posted 25 September 2013 | (01:00)

Ed Miliband’s promises at the Labour Party Conference will give hope to the millions worrying about how they will heat their home this winter. Consistently, we find that rising energy prices is one of the top worries for hard-pressed consumers with some people even having to dip in to their…

 

Regulator Needs to Work Hard to Prove It Can Change Banking

Posted 26 June 2013 | (01:00)

Published last week, the long-awaited Parliamentary Commission into Banking Standards (PCBS) final report weighed in at 550 pages and included a long list of recommendations designed to tackle the broken culture in the UK’s banking industry.

Which? has long been campaigning for a Big Change in banking to put customers…

 

The Government Needs to Green Up its Act

 Posted 21 May 2012 | (01:00)

As the prime minister is reportedly reviewing the coalition’s flagship Green Deal, we want him to take this opportunity to make big changes to ensure this scheme turns out to be a good deal for consumers.

Which? supports the ambition for homes to be more energy efficient and we welcome…

 

 

 

So…banking, green policies and reining in the energy companies, remarkably close to Miliband’s own agenda.

Good to know who has which finger in which political pie…I would think that Lloyd’s political affiliation’s were very relevant considering the influential role Miliband is intent on giving him….disguised under cover of his role as ‘consumer’s champion’ at Which?.

Maybe the BBC can keep us informed about such relationships…after all they were pretty keen to examine in detail Tory advisor Lynton Crosby’s ‘shocking conflict of interest’ when the opportunity came up.

 

 

 

The Very Selective BBC

 

What the BBC doesn’t report is often as telling as what and how it reports other news stories.

 

It does seem that if for instance you are Muslim, or someone positioned to influence government policy on climate change, you are pretty safe from critical BBC investigation.

 

Andrew Gilligan has spent a long time investigating and reporting on the extremely dodgy happenings in Tower Hamlets where Muslim extremists look to have the whip hand…and a £1 billion budget to spend on their favourite prejudices.

The BBC downplayed and often ignored totally all such serious events….had the council been run by, oh say a UKIP mayor, you can guarantee the BBC would have been in Tower Hamlets turning the place upside down looking for dirt.

In order not to give viewers the impression that any Muslim could in any way be associated with criminal or unseemly behaviour, and thereby give rise to the possibility that people might then associate all Muslims with that kind of behaviour, the BBC censors the news and edits out the uncomfortable bits in the interests of community cohesion….ala Rochdale before the **** hit the fan.

 

In a similar way the BBC has long ignored the copious evidence gathered by Guido on Tim Yeo, now the de-selected Tim Yeo.

Yeo is of course the chair of the highly influential  Energy and Climate Change Committee which informs and guides government policy on climate change…and of course Yeo is fully on board the AGW bandwagon, as well as having numerous, and highly lucrative, green industry business interests, and so the BBC has looked to protect his position and not expose him to any charges that might get him removed as chairman of that committee and thereby lose their green champion.

 

News, just not all the news.

 

There again the BBC isn’t too keen on accountability and openness in its own affairs:

Former BBC executive given £680,000 pay off says ‘I did a big job’

 

Good how Mark Thompson won’t admit he knew about Savile and now won’t admit he knew the IT disaster was on the cards.

Maybe all those big payoffs were ‘hush’ money…just don’t spill the beans!

 

 

 

 

Green Con-Sensus?

 

Man has been warming the planet by puffing out CO2….since the 50’s…before that it was Mother Nature….apparently.

However these two graphs from the Met. Office are interesting:

 

This shows the UK annual sunshine….and you can make a direct relationship between sunshine and apparent global warming time frames…..and a leveling off at the end of the 90’s….

 

 

This one showing the UK summer sunshine is perhaps even more clear…the rise in sunshine from the end of the 70’s to the distinct drop off of summer sunshine at the end of the 90’s:

 

 

Are the oceans sucking up the missing heat as Harrabin (English graduate) insists…or is the heat just missing because the sun ain’t shining?

No doubt the answer will be…yes the sun has an effect but man has made it worse.

 

 

 

 

 

Jackarses

 

 

Oops…more language problems at the BBC:

 

From the Independent:

Friday saw the start of the Chinese new year, with this being the year of the horse.

Unfortunately the BBC News’ subtitle system didn’t understand the memo quite right, and instead declared this the ‘year of the whores,’ too much the embarrassment of the channel.

“Welcome to the year of the whores. People around the globe celebrate,” read the subtitles.

FART

 

 

Peter Hitchens shows the BBC’s strange double standards:

The BBC just loves swearing – until it gets a dose of its own @!X*! medicine

The BBC have refused  to accept a complaint about bad language transmitted on national radio – because the complainer’s letter used exactly the same words that they had used on air.

They told Colin Harrow that his letter’s tone and language were ‘unacceptably abusive or offensive’.
In other words, the BBC are ready to transmit words into our homes which their staff are not prepared to read.

The programme involved, a Radio 4 play called Paradigm, was broadcast on Tuesday, January 21 at 2.15 pm, long before any sort of watershed.

No warning of bad language was given. An 80-year-old spinster, or a small child, could have been exposed without notice to a dialogue including the words p***, s*** (lavatory expressions), s*** (a sexual expression), b******s, b****r , b*****d, and some other crudities I’ll omit.

Mr Harrow thought he would treat the Corporation as they had treated him. He opened his letter with the same words and a similar tone (he did not use asterisks, but I have).

‘This afternoon’s play was sh***. It p***ed me off. The b*****d who wrote it needs sh****ing. Perhaps the b****r should be kicked in the testicles while stark b****** naked.’

He added: ‘I hope whoever reads this  is not offended by the language used so far, but then if they work for the BBC why should they be?

‘After all, every swearword and obscenity was used, some several times over, in this “afternoon” play, so I guess the BBC regards them as perfectly acceptable, including, I’m sure, in letters of complaint.’

The metropolitan sophisticates of the Corporation (in my experience well used to every rude word in the language and then some) drew up their skirts like Victorian maiden aunts, and primly rejected the complaint, saying they felt ‘unable to circulate it more widely to our colleagues’.

‘When handling your complaint,’ they continued piously, ‘we will treat you courteously and with respect. We expect you to show equal courtesy  and respect towards our staff and reserve the right to discontinue correspondence if you do not.’

Am I Bovvered?

 

 

 

The OFSTED chair, Labour’s Baroness Sally Morgan, has been relieved of her post….but stays on until the Autumn (Though personally I would now sack her as she clearly is at odds with the government)

 

She is complaining bitterly that this is a Tory Party coup to clear out non-Tory supporters from government quangos……she is Labour…but in the interview on Today this morning said it wasn’t about Labour people being ousted, and anyway the government is also part LibDem…so why does she complain she has been party politically ‘cleansed’?

 

The BBC has made hay with this all day…running with it as its headline story on every news bulletin immediately after the interview. (The Today interview is available halfway down this BBC report)

This was the headline on the Frontpage for much of the day:

No 10 ousting non-Tories from posts

 

 

Now there was absolutely no proof given, or asked for by Naughtie (Labour supporter), that this was happening….just a vague comment that ‘there’s a lot of talk about this…no really!’.

 

What was strange was that this ‘revelation’ didn’t seem to be a surprise to Naughtie who was well informed about the ins and outs of the system to appoint staff to quangos….maybe he is just brilliant and has this information tucked away in his head.

…or perhaps he had prior notice this subject would come up and came prepared.

 

It does look like the BBC were tipped the wink about this and ran with it whilst avoiding actually looking for any confirmation of the claims…..Labour have planted a story and have had a days worth of anti-Tory headlines courtesy of the BBC.

Only now, early evening, are we getting a truer picture, but of course the damage is done, and the legend will become fact on the leftwing blogs and the BBC hope, will lurk in the back of more sensible people and colour their thinking however subconsciously….drip drip drip.

 

 

Fraser Nelson in 2012 said this:

Gordon Brown’s secret army could defeat the Coalition’s welfare and education reforms

Britain’s charities and quangos are now stuffed to the gunwales with Labour placemen

In the article he tells that under the Tories it is Labour who have had the lion’s share of appointments:

Figures out yesterday show that 77 per cent of politically active quango appointees last year were Labour supporters. Not even Gordon Brown dared top up his government-in-exile at such a rate.

 

No such story from the BBC.

 

 

And Nelson reprises his article today in the Spectator:

Sally Morgan is wrong: quangos are not stuffed with Tories

Public Appointments by political allegiance (Red being Labour…black neutral))Screen Shot 2014-02-01 at 14.41.50

 

Shows that far from packing in Tories it is neutral appointees being given many positions whilst Labourites still rule the roost.

Screen Shot 2014-02-01 at 14.36.06

 

Even some of Labour’s own people aren’t impressed by OFSTED:

Streamline Target Culture and Reform Ofsted

Education has become too politicised……..Ofsted’s current tactics and staffing ensures an outdated, unsupportive view in many cases and a large stress in the best cases.

 

 

Yet another Labour story run by an accommodating BBC.

 

Perhaps one public body the Tories should ‘cleanse’ is the leftwing BBC.

 

 

 

 

Yawn!!!

 

 

One big yawn from the BBC over the large scale anti-terror police operation to arrest diplomat’s son James Sutcliffe….no sign of their having reported it at all……

 

Thankfully there’s always the Daily Mail:

Police swooped on British diplomat’s son ‘after he signed for neighbour’s package while they were out’

  • Scotland Yard had feared that parcel contained deadly poison Abrin

 

Turns out he was completely innocent.

So symptomatic of the police’s oppression of the white, middle classes.

 

Whereas we had endless BBC coverage when two Muslims were arrested in similar circumstances:

Muslims protest over terror raid

Around 100 people have protested about an anti-terror raid in east London a week ago, claiming it was symptomatic of oppression of the Islamic community.

 

FOREST GATE RAID
LATEST NEWS

 

 

 

Wonder what the difference is for the BBC between the two operations.

 

 

Bubble And Squeak

 

 

The BBC’s initial report on Scarlett Johansson, Oxfam and Soda Stream was this:

Scarlett Johansson quits Oxfam role over SodaStream row

 

And it ended with this fine bit of journalism:

However, away from the factory, Reuters quoted one unnamed Palestinian employee as saying “there’s a lot of racism” at work.

“Most of the managers are Israeli, and West Bank employees feel they can’t ask for pay rises or more benefits because they can be fired and easily replaced,” he added.

 

Now however the BBC has got off its backside and actually done some work:

SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum on West Bank factory

The BBC’s Kevin Connolly spoke to the CEO of SodaStream, Daniel Birnbaum……where we are told that Palestinian workers receive exactly the same pay and benefits as Israeli workers….and in this report by Connolly on Today we can hear a Palestinian foreman at the factory telling us he is happy to work there….it’s an excellent place to work he says…they ‘give us good opportunities.’

 

So that’s a Palestinian ‘boss’, on equal pay and benefits, with opportunities, who has been promoted and is happy to work there.

 

Yeah….I can see why they’d like to close that factory down…the 500 Palestinian workers are suffering racism, intimidation, low wages and poor conditions.

 

What I can’t see is why the BBC would decide to report such negative comments without any proof whatsoever especially as the reporting of any issue from this region is highly sensitive.

 

The BBC censors any news that it believes will have a negative impact upon the image of Muslims in this country in the interests of ‘cohesion’ and yet is prepared to print what are no more than ‘Elders Of Zion’ type lies about an Israeli company regardless, or rather in full knowledge, of what the consequences are……a negative image of Israel, endorsement of Palestinian terror as ‘justified’ by Israeli ‘oppression’ and eventually the delegitimisation of Israel…and of course its eventual elimination as a state.

 

From BBC Watch:

At no point in this report is any attempt made to inform readers of the context of Oxfam’s record of politically motivated campaigning against Israel. Likewise, at no point is any attempt made to explain to audiences that Oxfam’s stance is the result of its alignment with the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) and that the aim of that movement is the dismantling of Israel as the Jewish state through a campaign of delegitimisation.

“With pressure imposed by the international community through a BDS campaign a la anti-Apartheid campaign which brought Apartheid South Africa to an end, we believe that Israel itself can be transformed into a secular democratic state after the return of 6 million Palestinian refugees who were ethnically cleansed in 1948, a state for ALL of its citizens…therefore, we think that one of the major tools of the struggle towards a secular democratic state is BDS.” Haider Eid, 2009

“So BDS does mean the end of the Jewish state…I view the BDS movement as a long-term project with radically transformative potential… the success of the BDS movement is tied directly to our success in humanizing Palestinians and discrediting Zionism as a legitimate way of regarding the world.” Ahmed Moor, 2010

 

 

 

Here is another recent example where unsubstantiated and charged rumour gets a good airing as ‘news’:

 

Israeli troops kill Palestinian in West Bank

We get a lurid report based mostly on Palestinian witnesses…….

 

Palestinian man has been shot dead by Israeli troops in the West Bank.

Palestinian medics identified him as Mohammed Mubarak, 22, a labourer from the Jalazun refugee camp near Ramallah.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said its soldiers had opened fire on a “terrorist” after he attacked an army post near the settlement of Ofra.

But Palestinian witnesses told the AFP news agency that Mubarak had not been armed, and had been harassed by the troops and made to remove his clothes.

A Palestinian Red Crescent spokesman said he was found with three bullet wounds in his back.

Palestinian Housing and Public Works Minister Maher Ghneim called for an investigation into the “cold-blooded killing”.

 

 

So the Palestinian ‘witnesses’ tell us that the man was stripped by the Israelis and then shot in the back…and the BBC is happy to report this sort of explosive material.

 

This is a photo of the ‘stripped’ man with gun: (via BBC Watch)

Maan photo

 

The BBC eventually gets around to giving a fuller version of the Israeli side….

The Israeli military insisted its soldiers felt “an imminent threat to their lives”, adding that a weapon and 12 bullet casings had been recovered.

Ohad Shoham, the soldier who says he shot Mubarak, told Israeli Army Radio the Palestinian had fired a gun.

He was the first Palestinian to have been killed by Israeli troops in the West Bank this year.

 

 

Here is the Palestinian’s gun…in another photo not provided by the BBC….

terrorist

From the Jerusalem Post: 

IDF troops shot dead a Palestinian man who opened fire at an army post in the West Bank on Wednesday.

The man, named by Palestinians as Muhammad Mubarak, 21, from the Jalazoun refugee camp near Ramallah, fired a dozen rounds at the outpost northeast of Ramallah near Ofra before he was cut down by return fire by the troops, according to the IDF.

The army said that the man died at the scene, and that it did not know how many times he was hit.

 

Here are photos from Mubarak’s Facebook page:

Mubarak Facebook

 

Note weapon in photo 3rd from left on bottom row….same one/type as used by Mubarak.

Hand made only by Palestinians:

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/middleeasthomemademachinegun3-improguns.jpg

 

The BBC then add, as usual, the death toll for a chosen period…..apparently we are supposed to weigh up the deaths on both sides and any imbalance will indicate the level of Israel’s murderous oppression of Palestinians…..

 

Twenty-seven Palestinians were killed in 2013, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, three times as many as in 2012.

In the same period, the group said nine Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were killed by Israeli forces, while Palestinians killed three Israeli civilians and three Israeli security forces personnel in Israel and the West Bank.

 

What’s missing is just how many Palestinians have been killed by other Palestinians in the course of their internal ‘political’ tangles….never mind the Syrian occupation of Lebanon for nearly 30 years…ironically to control the Palestinian terror groups hiding there…..doesn’t get much coverage unlike Israel’s invasion of Lebanon for the same purpose in 1982.

 

Here’s just one example:

Published:

1 Jan 2011

In the period around 2007, the Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas waged a violent struggle, primarily in the Gaza Strip. The fighting peaked in June 2007, when Hamas seized control of the Strip. In 2008, the violence abated but did not cease. Throughout the struggle, human rights violations committed by Palestinians against Palestinians increased, both in number and severity.

In 2007, at least 353 Palestinians were killed, 349 of them in the Strip, and thousands were injured, in the fighting between the factions. B’Tselem’s figures indicate that at least 86 of the dead, 23 of them children, were passersby and were killed during street fighting or from gunfire during demonstrations.

 

The other obvious ‘missing’ is just who is attacking who…..the Jews in Israel having been under attack from Muslims for over 60 years now.

 

 

 

THAT COST OF LIVING CRISIS – BBC STRIKES BACK

A few days back, the Government produced figures which suggested that most people in employment have seen at least a modest INCREASE in their living standards over the past year, as inflation falls and wages rise. The BBC was not happy about this at the time since it directly contradicts the Labour narrative about “cost of living crisis” and I recall them bringing on an economist to challenge what the Coalition was suggesting. This morning, they give blazing headlines to a claim by the The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) that average UK living standards have fallen “dramatically” since the recession and will not reach pre-crisis levels by the next election. The IFS is just another front for Labour left wing philosophy and have been moaning for years now that austerity doesn’t work. They got that wrong but when they say what the BBC wants they get an east rid